CSGM: A R Package to Conduct a Robust Cross-Sectional Geometric Morphometric Analysis

Area of Science:

• * Paleoanthropology and biomechanics.
• * Human functional and evolutionary morphology.

Background:

• * Understanding bone cross-section shape and biomechanical function is crucial for human morphology research.
• * Analyzing complex shape data and biomechanical variables presents significant statistical challenges.
• * Existing methods lack streamlined approaches for hypothesis testing on morphofunctional relationships.

Purpose of the Study:

• * To develop the CSGM R package for statistical hypothesis testing on bone cross-section geometry and shape.
• * To provide interactive visualizations for analyzing morphofunctional relationships.
• * To enable efficient parallel analysis of complex data using a nested hypothesis testing approach.

Main Methods:

• * Development of the CSGM package in R, offering functions for 3D shape analysis and visualization.
• * Implementation of statistical inferential techniques: correlation, covariation, classification, and prediction.
• * Demonstration using datasets from modern human mandibular corpus cross-sections.

Main Results:

• * The CSGM package identified significant shape asymmetry in the mandibular corpus.
• * This asymmetry was found to disproportionately affect bending resistance and breaking strength.
• * The study sample exhibited asymmetric impacts on key biomechanical properties.

Conclusions:

• * The CSGM package provides a robust toolkit for testing morphofunctional relationships.
• * Its nested hypothesis modeling and interactive visualizations aid in interpreting complex data.
• * CSGM facilitates the analysis of intricate relationships between bone shape and function.